Lovers' Path
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: Three times Shinichi Kudo has failed to tell Ai Haibara he loves her, and one time he didn’t.


**Title: Lovers' Path**

**Author: **Sky Samuelle

**Fandom: **Detective Conan, Case Closed

**Pairing: **Conan/Ai, Shinichi/Shiho

**Summary: **Three times Shinichi Kudo has failed to tell Ai Haibara he loves her, and one time he didn't.

**AN: TO be fair, I must specify that Ai's line about Conan's ego in this story was inspired by the fanfiction 'Fumbling toward happily even after ' by amomentintime. Also thanks to Nyx Underwood for introducing me to the Yeats poem I cite there. **

---

_She_ is his Irene Adler - a cool and haunting presence that has seeped into his life unwanted and ill-welcome but has become both natural and essential over time, the only intellectual equal whom he has ever known, always throwing him off his game or keeping him on his toes with her sharp wit, her eerie intuitiveness and her hard temper.

Shinichi Kudo loved his Ran, but as days grew into weeks, months_, years_, Shinichi grew weaker, became the shadow of Conan Edogawa. Or maybe more like a ghost, the ghost of distant pasts and would-be futures.

Conan is more mature than Shinichi – less ambitious, less focused on himself. Conan has tasted suffering, longing, loneliness, injustice whereas Shinichi has simply basked in the brighter side of life and taken it all for granted, simply because he was handsome and smarter than average.

Conan is also more calculating, more understanding of human weakness. He perceives shades of grey where Shinichi would only see white and black, and this allows him to be compassionate towards those he gets arrested.

"Just admit you like it when they confess because you enjoy cornering the guilty." – Ai had mocked him once- "It strokes your ego, doesn't it? God, if you could bottle it up and sell it, you might feed the Third World for _decades _and still get richer than Cresus."

He secretly likes the way she has to tease him, how haughty and dispassionate her voice gets when she is having her fun at his expense.

Shinichi would perhaps despise Shiho Miyano, or worse yet, he would have never been able to understand her.

But Ai and Conan? They have a common ground to walk on and, most importantly, they have learned to be kind to each other, despite contrary odds and circumstances.

They confide in each other as much as their nature will allow them to and they know to stand silently by each other even if the majority of their important conversations take place under the clever cover of their unending sarcasm (he likes that as well, although she is that one person he so rarely gets to have the last word with).

Ai challenges him and provokes him and drags him forcefully down from more high horses than he can count every day- harshly and remorselessly- but it's okay. _It's okay._ In her cryptic, emotionally stunted way she is the best friend he has ever had.

She is his ally (_his anchor_) in this crazy, dark world of death, lies and sacrifice in which they are forced to fight tooth and nail for their survival, although she would say it is maybe a bit over-dramatic to put their situation in these terms.

Ai startles him and intrigues him with those most unexpected moments of vulnerability she strives to conceal with sharp looks and indifferent words.

She is somewhat of a muse, an eternal question mark, a companion and an opponent blended into one child-shaped creature with ancient eyes, scientific mind, bland facial expressions and biting remarks.

Every time he felt in danger of forgetting who he was, all it took was a glance at her, at her adult mannerisms and mask of aloofness, so out of place on the little girl's appearance she was forced to sport, to have the confirmation he craved: that this was indeed reality, and they were really not children, but adults stuck in younger bodies.

Conan's love for Ran is not so different from Shinichi's: a spot of safety and warmth in a life that is always rushing somewhere new, a deeply rooted sense of being home with someone else laced with an elusive promise of 'more.' For Conan, the feeling is both more distant and more familiar at once.

Conan pays more attention to Ran than Shinichi used to, and yet there's the sensation that knowing her better doesn't help at all. The longing to be with her is an old friend he is well-acquainted with, constantly diminished from all dangers and changes of his new life. He and Ran are growing up, changing together but apart.

And if Black Organizations eventually fall and childhood sweethearts grant their forgiveness for too drawn-out deceptions, it's the bitterest irony that Conan is, for all the supposed experiences he has endured, all the criminals he has hunted down, just as clueless about his heart as Shinichi has always been.

It's just when _She _finallyplaces the so-desired pillin his open palm that he begins to understand how much of a stranger he still is to his most elementary feelings.

In his hands is the antidote to ATPX, the secret key to return from Conan to Shinichi, to have Ran back in all the ways that truly matter and he feels incredibly giddy and relieved.

Until _She_ lets it slip with studied casualness that she won't follow him in his choice.

"The professor and I talked for a long time last night. When he said I could stay here with him, whether as Shiho or as Ai, I understood it was better for me to let the past go. I have too much to lose and nothing to gain by returning to my former self. "

He shakes his head, incredulous, for some reason unable to grasp what she is trying to explain.

"You are kidding, right? You can't seriously be considering it. This is not some American B-movie where reliving childhood is all fun and no work. You would be pretending every day of your life, mimicking a child surrounded by other children until you get to your teen years again. It will be lonely and frustrating and you…you will be powerlesswith your life."

That last observation should shake her out of her absurd project: she hates being dependent on other people or unable to control her life to the smallest detail. She should see his point and concede he is right, even if she will strive to dissimulate it and drag the conversation out until she can make it appear like she has changed her mind for reasons that have nothing to do with his skills of persuasion.

Instead, Ai shrugs off his very rational objections like they mean nothing. "With Agasa as my guardian, I'll always be able to make my own decisions about my life, and honestly, I've far more autonomy as Ai Haibara than Shiho Miyano. People are usually disinclined to expect ulterior motives and manipulation from a child. I can protect myself better this way."

He knows it's hopeless to convince her otherwise- the matter-of-fact tone and firm attitude are a dead give-away that her opinion is made- but the finality of that choice makes him feel so senselessly betrayed than he just _can't_ let it go.

"So that's your higher aspiration? A life of pretence and manipulation? Don't you see that-"

She narrows her eyes at him at what she perceives to be judgment in his voice (it's just hurt, really, and anger, but if he can't explain those feelings to himself, how can he expect her to recognize them?) and she cuts him off icily. "What I don't see, Kudo-kun, is why your opinion should factor into my decisions."

_It matters because I'm not ready to… lose you_, he thinks, but the vehemence of that sense of impending loss making itself known in that fugacious thought catches him so unaware and unprepared that he can't voice it.

"Ai-" he trails off as the blonde scientist turns her back on him, because allowing this scene to end like this feels incredibly wrong and he wants to explain himself, both to her and to his mind.

"What?"

There are no words and so, in the face of that final glare of hers, he remains silent.

---

Past the initial, enthusiastic stage, things between Ran and Shinichi are strange, if not difficult. He finds himself talking to her like he used to talk to her as Conan sometimes, and Ran feels awkward about that…she is also sort of fixated on the fact that he doesn't completely trust her.

There's a difficulty in drawing lines between the past, the present and the future, and he occasionally feels like he's still playing a role in a charade with far too many variables – or like time moved forward without him- but he has wanted this second chance for too long to not work for it, and Ran is willing to stand by him in the struggle.

He visits Professor Agasa often, and he and Ai stay good friends by long emails or phone calls and dinners Shinichi invites himself over to whenever it suits him.

Years pass by and he and Ran are still each other's number one fans, but they have discovered that it takes more than that to make an adult romance work: their lives just don't fit together anymore and no amount of effort will coerce them to not notice that they speak different languages, have different priorities and too contrasting interests. Passion has faded fast in the face of everything else.

Adolescence is sweet on Ai Haibara: she becomes quite the beauty, and Genta and Mitsuiko have their hard work to chase unwanted suitors off her back while Ayumi trails constantly behind her as an adoring shadow.

Shinichi is surprised that Ai can stand it, but she looks serene, for the first time since he has known her. If he is really honest, he admits he misses being Conan a bit… having more friends than fans, more talent than fame, more challenges than murder cases.

He understands the reasons Ai chose that for, now. He is proud to see she has reached that peculiar balance between being a prodigy of science and having a nearly normal life.

When she turns fourteen for the second time, his birthday gift for her is a white orchid in a tall, chiseled vase of blue-green pottery (almost the same shade of her eyes, but what does it matter? He has always had a leaning toward perfectionism). "Flawless but high maintenance. It reminded me of someone, " he writes on the accompanying card, and Ran frowns reading it over his shoulder, then questions why he has done it.

"Because it's true," Shinichi shrugs off, the grin plastered on his lips too clueless to arouse any suspicions of more than genuine amusement.

For him, it's truly just as simple as he has put it. He doesn't stop to consider why.

---

Agasa dies when Ai is sixteen. It's not a murder or under questionable circumstances – in some aspects, for people like Ai and Shinichi, it would be easier if it was- but just plain, natural, humbling death. In a fortnight the man who was a kind grandfather to Shinichi and a doting daddy- surrogate to Ai is gone, peacefully: good, old Professor simply falls asleep on his favorite armchair, a dreamy small smile on his aged face, notes of his experiments in his lap, and in the morning there's no waking him up.

The funeral is a sad, discreet affair, tastefully organized in good synchrony by those closest to the deceased. Ayumi, Mitsuiko and Genta flank Ai throughout the ceremony as Shinichi just watches time pass him by, Ran and Sonoko by his side, focusing on Ai's delicate but unwaveringly vacant features as she handles with composed courtesy the condolences of old friends and colleagues or simple admirers of the old scientist.

He manages to meet and hold her gaze only for a few spare seconds, but the searing desolation he glimpses there leaves him undone.

That was the closest to a family she has ever had, and she wanted it enough to relive her childhood for it, but now that it's gone, it strikes him that she must feel bone-deep lonely.

He tries to show her that she will never be really alone, if he can help it. She is his nemesis and his comrade and that won't pass with the loss of Hagasa. Shinichi stays with her after the funeral, with the pretext of aiding her to get the professor's room in some semblance of order. The blonde chemist mostly ignores him unless she deems it strictly necessary to instruct him about doing this or that, yet even like this there's a preternatural synch to their shared work.

When they are done, she just sits on Agasa' s bed, her fingers caressing the covers with something not unlike reverence despite her hooded eyes and expressionless visage. Shinichi just watches her, patient, until she finally speaks.

"Do you know that poem of William Yeats', 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'?"

"Yes, I think I remember it. Isn't it about a log cabin in the wilderness? "

Even in her somber mood, Ai rolls her eyes at him, the familiar gesture appearing oddly half-hearted and tired.

"I love that poem. Especially the line '_And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,_

_Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;_

_There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purpose glow,_

_And evening full of the linnet's wings.'_

Innisfree is not merely a wood cabin by a lake; it's a place of incredible peace and purity. A place where one can always find beauty and innocence, and a cradle where one can return pure and beautiful, regardless of anything that happened before. "

Shinichi waits a little, but his companion won't look at him or continue, so he braves pronouncing those words she can't: "This house was your Innisfree, wasn't it?"

Ai nods, covering her face with a shaky hand. "I wanted to be his little girl forever" comes out of her lips like a tremulous, broken giggle. The sound is so painful to hear that the boy is beside her before he can fully realize he has moved. His arms draw her close instinctively, offering the hug he had once denied her in the aftermath of Akemi's death. She hides her visage in the crook of his neck before he can really take in her expression, and he gets that she does it not out of comfort but because she hates the feeling of the exposure, probably even hates him for that rebellious desire of hers to be understood in her grief, despite her will to stay guarded and strong.

All the same, he tries to slink back to take her face in his hands and run his fingers through her pale hair, and he is thrown off a bit when she leans in and responds by slanting her lips over his.

Perhaps she is the one who kisses him first, but it's him who pulls her trembling figure flush against his, making sure they fall together on the mattress, every inch of their bodies pressing against the other's like they can draw strength and nourishment from wrapping their limbs so tightly around each other.

Making love to Ai is experiencing a wildfire from inside out: he tries to worship her and to comfort her, guided by some fierce, foolish drive to both heal her and possess her with his hands and mouth, and she seems set on both accepting him and punishing him at once for those intentions.

It's a delirium of heady tastes and desperate sounds so utterly unprecedented that Shinichi loses the sense of everything except her and the fierceness of this incomprehensible and irrepressible feeling that is preying on them while they explore each other for the first time.

He's drowning in her, his Ai, her love and her sorrow, his love and his sorrow.

Deep down, he knows there will be no turning back from this night.

Afterwards, holding her slim body in his arms, he's shocked by the magnitude of what he has just done. Sure, Ai is mentally past twenty, just like him, but physically she is underage and she feels small and fragile against him. _On Agasa's bed._ Suddenly, Shinichi feels dirty, guilty and vaguely disgusted with himself. He had not meant to abuse her vulnerability, and this most certainly wasn't what he had meant when he had promised to always protect her.

"I'm sorry," he hears himself muttering in her hair, just above her earlobe, before he can think better of it. Ai shudders and almost curls into herself for a moment, but then she is sliding away from him, in one slow and fluid motion. Her gaze meets his, probes his remorseful expression so deeply he can't doubt, despite the practical impossibility of it, that she is reading his very mind, and something indefinable – but not pleasant- flutters underneath her flawless features a few seconds before they become bland and nearly lifeless. He can see it flashing in her eyes, that desire to lash out and bruise with sharp words, mercurial and haunting, and he stiffens in response even before she wets her lips and delivers her blow.

"Ironic, isn't it? I think I was sixteen in my other lifetime, too." – the corners of her mouth lift in an almost predatory smirk- "Well, at least I can say you were more attentive than Gin. It's an improvement. "

Shinichi flinches, both at the comparison and the self-deprecating accent in her voice.

"Ai, I… I-"

"Do you even know what you want to say?"

No, he doesn't. There's nothing child-like or naïve in the person Shiho Miyano had learnt to be, and Ai Haibara is born from Shiho's ashes. Her eyes are full of shadows and her swollen lips are still curled in that thin, derogatory smirk, but it hardly matters, because the overwhelming desire to kiss her, to have her impossibly close again, dances in the back of his startled mind.

It flashes across his jumbled thoughts that Ai is not his – not his to protect or to coddle, let alone to love- nor has she ever been, and he has no idea of what this _thing_ they have just roused between them means.

"God, just leave already. I would like to actually be alone with myself for a moment or two today."

"I don't think you should be. "

It's not in her best interests, regardless of how awkward the situation has recently become. Ai has always had, since he has met her, a keen propensity to get self-destructive when left to her own devices for too long or in a state of emotional unsettlement.

"Duly noted. Now go away"

Nobody can quite dismiss him like Ai can. There's something undefined in every coolly insulting, annoyed inflection she can infuse in her voice or the sharpness of her unsympathetic gaze or her indolent wit or the expectant tilt of her head that manages to crack his usual confidence and force him to feel, on occasion, both stupid and ultimately insignificant with the bare minimum of well-chosen words and gestures.

And so, wrong or not, Shinichi leaves.

---

He is not surprised when Ai starts to push everyone away. She is a master at dealing with her darker and deeper emotions by withdrawing within, after all.

She becomes short-tempered and biting to her friends, chillingly polite to her acquaintances, unfalteringly dismissive to Shinichi.

"Look Ai, I know what happened with us was wrong"– he tries to justify and mollify her- "but I only want to help- "

"_Nothing_ would be more helpful than you making yourself scarce. I would love to have at least a bit of breathing space. "

"I don't believe it and neither do you."

"So what, _Shinichi_, are you offering some alternative means of stress relief again?"

With that mocking remark he realizes too late that in crossing that final barrier with her, he has single-handedly served to her the perfect weapon to destroy that trust they have built so prudently in years of rarely professed friendship.

So he lets her be, not because she vehemently asked him to more than once, but because the way lines too easily blur between them might terrify if he allowed himself to fully see.

His sense of right and wrong, his balance, his every belief seem either to stray or be put under a trial by fire when Haibara is somehow involved.

Shinichi decides to buy time for both of them, hoping a bit of distance can put in perspective her grief, as well as his confusion.

It should not come as a shock when Ai disappears, a few months after, without so much as a goodbye card to her oldest friends, even sweet little Ayumi. Isn't it what she has already done, years ago, to escape her past when it was too cumbersome and heavy to shoulder?

Yet Shinichi's first reaction to the news of Ai's absence is pure panic. It feels like her vanishing act has ripped something brutally away from him: the sky, the sun, the ground under his feet, his past as Conan, the very best of whatever Shinichi Kudo has been or might become someday…it feels impossible that anything of that may exist if Ai is gone. There's only the imperious urge to find her, to find her fast.

He _needs_ to know where she is, even if he doesn't dare to imagine what he might do with the information.

He manages to convince himself that it's normal, that Ai is his friend and he owes it to her to be certain she is alright because she won't have anybody else to look out for her. Or at least, that he is the one person she can't intimidate or stop from looking out for her.

To locate her isn't even as difficult as he feared it would be. She is in London, hurriedly enrolled in a school for young geniuses directed by a long-time friend of Agasa's.

"You need to come back," Shinichi insists during one frantic phone call.

"Why?"

Even from the other side of the phone, Ai sounds indifferent if not flat out bored.

"Aren't you tired of running, yet? Your home is in Beika. Here or across the ocean, Hagasa is gone. Isn't it better to bear the grief beside people who care? "

"No"

"Ai-"

"Is there anything else?"

"I-" It shouldn't be so difficult, to utter a simple fistful of honest words: _'I miss you. I care. I want you here. I need you here. I lo-'_

No, he can't bear to bring his lips to complete any of those phrases, or his mind to finish the deductive thought. It feels like his entire existence might shift with the weight of all he won't or can't pronounce.

His interlocutor sighs softly on the other side, then breaks the impasse with a strained confession: " it won't ever be again like it was before. I could be happy like that, pretending I was good girl with a good family and good friends. With no past, and too young to be anything to you. Too young to be compared to your angel. I don't settle. If nothing can be like before, I would prefer to have nothing at all."

Although she hates to explain herself, and Shinichi can _feel_ this, she stays put and expectant, waiting for him to acknowledge his understanding of her reasons. He understands, but is strangely reluctant to express it. His thoughts are racing and chasing each other anxiously and he wishes that she would keep talking, that his heart wasn't thundering so fastidiously in his chest.

It's quite obvious that Ai isn't Ran, and that she might never take her place. And Ai doesn't ever sign up for second best. And he is not supposed to love Ai as anything but a friend.

He has _always_ loved Ran Mouri, since they were children, and a reality where that dark-haired girl isn't the sole focus of his feelings is inconceivable. Perhaps they aren't together today, nor have they been for a long time, but there's always been this unspoken, expectative lingering that someday their paths would stop diverging and they would find a happy medium where they could reconcile and finally be happy, in love once more.

Ai understood the gist before he did, so maybe her leaving makes sense. Maybe, if she had her reasons to go, and he has no reason to hold her back, it is indeed for the best.

When the line falls dead, he knows better than to call back.

---

Shinichi and Ran attempt to be a couple again, and he strives harder, which results in making her happier, but eventually they fall victim to the same issues that led to their breakup the first time around.

Until the evening comes when they are arguing about him not having any genuine interest in anything but criminals and crimes. Ran suddenly asks "Do you even still love me anymore?"

The funny part? It's just at that moment Shinichi realizes he can't say 'yes'. As he resentfully questions himself over that, the only reply his brain has to offer is Ai's name.

It's been months since _she_'s been gone and he still wants her, still remembers her with alarming frequency and clarity. He has not missed Ran while he has been working with Heiji because he's been too busy not missing someone else.

He is not in love with Ran Mouri anymore, because he has fallen for someone else**. **Hard.

Suddenly the denial that has hindered his mental processes for so long dissolves, and he sees the reality for the shaming mess it is.

Ironic but perfect, really. Since he was a kid, he has wanted nothing more than to be the Sherlock Holmes of the modern era and whether he has realized his dream or not, there's no doubt that Ai –Shiho, Sherry, whatever she might to be calling herself now- is every bit the ideal reflection of Irene Adler. From her reddish-blonde locks to her brilliant intelligence and shady past, Ai is the living image of Holmes' one, unfulfilled love.

For the first time he understands clearly what Arthur Conan Doyle meant by stating, throughout Watson's commentary, that for Sherlock Holmes, despite his previously misogynistic prejudices, Miss Adler was always THE woman.

Ai's azure, green-freckled eyes, Ai's every nuance of voice, her genius, her fragilities, her pride, her iron will, her wit, her most enigmatic smile all _live_ within Shinichi's memory like something above human and beyond any possibility of comparison with others.

Yes, he is ready to admit he is in love with her now, and with that admission comes a huge relief: finally, finally he has a right and a reason to not let her slip away. He won't lose her.

---

Ai inhabits a flat in Notting Hill (of course she wouldn't lower herself to the indignity of a dormitory, Shinichi smiles at himself, unable to imagine her sharing her oh-so-precious space with another teen, however gifted) and he decides it wouldn't serve any use waiting another mere second to let her forget where she belongs.

He is on a plane as soon he can manage to find a ticket, impatience and anxiety making him edgy until he is standing in front of her door, knocking on it.

"What are you doing here?"

In his dreams, Ai was always coldly beautiful, flawlessly elegant and unreachable, like a frighteningly powerful Ice Queen, but the girl who appears to him as the door opens looks only tired and surprised and real, yet all more beautiful for it.

"I came to bring you back home," he dares to say, and although he practiced this opening line a thousand times inside his head, it never sounded so theatrical and cliché in his imagination as it does to his ears now he has pronounced it.

Shinichi can feel the blush rising from his neck to his ears under Ai's most probing look. Her face is perfectly neutral and she remains incredibly still and quiet, almost daring him to add anything that will embarrass him further.

"You came to bring me back home," she repeats eventually, more skepticism than irony coloring her remark, for once.

"Yes."

Ai stands a little taller, her gaze sharpening and her eyebrows rising in mockery "Really? "

"I'm in love with you. I think I have been for a very long time."

She shakes her head, her hands waving him away in a dismissive gesture "You are a cretin."

And the door slams in his face before he can reconcile himself with her insane reaction and debate whether or not it is out of character.

Shinichi stares dumbstruck at the dark wood surface, unable to grasp that out of all possible scenarios he had predicted, this was wholly unexpected.

He has no wish to move or to leave or to accept this stupid epilogue to his and Ai's shared history. And that is all he knows for certain.

He is talking himself into knocking again when the door cracks unexpectedly open once more.

"Shinichi Kudo, you are really your own worst enemy"

Ai's delicate features, for a change, are not bothering to hide her uncertainty and her eyes are that liquid sea-green they were when they made love, that night he has ran from for so long and still never quite escaped.

Even her words are somehow breathy now, nearly a sigh of surrender that slides over his heart like a verbal caress meant to warm him and get him on pins and needles in the same grand instant.

Shinichi grins and steps forward, thinking that it doesn't matter how difficult it's going to be, being with Ai. He feels like every step he has taken since he has learnt to walk had to lead him right here, right now.

It's not destiny but nature.

His lips press on Ai's and her fingers cup the back of his head, drawing him to her and he can swear nothing has ever felt more natural than kissing her, loving her.

**END**


End file.
